China-India cooperation on carbon emission to benefit both: reports

Coordinated efforts by China and India will help in moving both the countries towards global sustainability goals in carbon emission, a leading Chinese daily said Wednesday.

An article in The People's Daily newspaper said that the two countries faced similar mitigation pressures and this suggested the possibility and priority of cooperation between the two nations.

Both China and India are now in the development stage of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, facing challenges of controlling greenhouse gases emissions, protection of the environment and moving towards a future of low-carbon sustainable development, the article said.

It said though China's per capita income levels, energy consumption and progress on socio-economic indicators were higher than India, the two countries have followed similar trajectories of rising energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

It said both the countries have been going through economic transformations as their economies have shifted to stronger reliance on the manufacturing and service sectors.

A large population is the biggest obstruction for China to develop a low-carbon economy, it said, adding that India too faced the same problem in combating carbon emissions. "Both China and India have high dependency on coal, although China's carbon intensity per energy supply is around 30 percent higher than that of other developed countries," the article stated. "It is evident that China and India's endowment of energy resources will make it more difficult to control greenhouse gas emissions than will be the case in other high-emitting countries," it added.

The artcle also pointed out that the achievements of the two countries in addressing climate change would significantly influence global efforts in realising the goal of limiting the average global surface temperature increase to two degrees celsius over the pre-industrial average.